Sunday, March 22, 2009

There are many musical acts who I find personally uncompelling but whose life stories are fabulously bizarre and hard to ignore. The chances of me getting home from a hard day at the factory and putting on an Eric Clapton record are slim. So why have I spent the last two weeks obsessed with his 1987 hit "Behind The Mask"?

In this inexplicable outing, the white blues guitar legend covers a Japanese synth-pop instrumental, not a hundred miles removed from the sort of music you'd get when a C64 game was loading off a cassette. He adds some of his mega fog-horn vocals, puts on some vast shoulderpads and unleashes.

I love this song and particularly this video. It's a vision of a world as far removed from the modern musical landscape as the Beatles were from ragtime jazz. The anointed kings of the new CD format, Phil Collins, Elton John and Mark Knopfler, join Slowhand to rip it up then presumably drink money juice backstage.

Growing up in the eighties, these guys were like the Easter Island heads, they were monolithic. They were old men playing a young man's game and it's hard to imagine that there will ever be "legacy" acts, 20-year unit-shifters like these again. Part of me thinks this is for the best and that we never want to see a 48 year old Julian Casablancas and a fat, heavily bearded Jack White squeezing out a mod-ish, late period hit together in 2026. Part of me wants nothing more.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Well, Scary Go Round book 7 has been paid for and gone to the printers, so I must turn my attention to the accompanying minicomic, "Erin Winters And The Bone Throne (Of Bones)". The only rules of this comic are that it will comprise one sheet of A4 paper, neatly folded, and it will feature the much beloved Erin Winters, the character the public most want to see back on their screens.

What will this story involve? Exactly how small are the panels going to be? Do I really have to print 450 of them? How can the result possibly please anybody? I will report back once progress begins.

About once a day someone sends me an email asking me to start a Twitter account so that they can follow me. I regret to inform the interested that I find Twitter mystifying and dull. An astonishing wave of smothering triviality! I feel like Donald Sutherland in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers saying this though and by the time we next speak I will have opened an account, my head canted to one side, eyes wide, mouth open in a terrible smile.

Friday, March 06, 2009

Having done a few fancy prints for the few, I'm working on some new posters (sold at the right price to the common man in quantity). This one's not finished yet but I thought you might like to see it. It's Whitby, the spiritual home of goths. Again, it's big enough to make a wallpaper of.

I think the ghosts are on their way to a birthday party! I realise it is more commercially viable to draw a big crazy Amy bikini beach party but I have to draw what I feel in my mind.

Monday, March 02, 2009

This week I am trying to round up all the jobs I didn't do last week because I was on my death bed. First to order is my UK Webcomix Thing print for this year. I will do a run of 20 (I think) and what doesn't sell will be on the site. The only way I can gauge interest in limited items up front is if you let me know and the blog comments are the best place for that.

If you click on the image, it links to a version that is probably big enough for wallpaper needs!